The Cobra's Strike
by Laitie
Summary: Not really sure where this is going. Just had this base idea for a while. An inexperienced villain is showing up, stealing chemical supplies from local laboratories. But she's just a pawn. Once she's caught, Batman and Co. are still faced with figuring out what she was helping. And both Dick and Naga(OC) find themselves dealing with feelings they never thought they'd have to. More


The lab was significantly larger than Punjab's, that was for certain. And it was much more... Well, at least it looked more legit. Which was expected, of course. But she had never really ever thought about chemistry labs or anything, so she had had no idea what to expect.

Punjab had trained her on all the computer security stuff, of course. But she still couldn't really believe how much there was in just one room. Getting into the room had been an adventure and a half already. Now, she found herself in a lab the size of her high school cafeteria. Unlike the cafeteria, though, everything was clean and spotless. There was the unmistakable stench of bleach everywhere, even though it had already been three hours since the place had been cleaned and closed out.

She finally found the locked refrigerator-thing labelled B8. She switched off her flashlight and examined her surroundings. She saw no signs of trip-lazers. No signs of booby-traps. Using her memory and hands, she found her way over to containment unit B8. She touched the screen of the computer-lock. It demanded a handprint. Great. These were particularly annoying.

With a roll of her bright green eyes, she set to work. She was too focused to sense the man slipping into the room. To feel him coming up behind her. To feel any displacement of the nearby air as he breathed soundlessly.

But she could never be too focused to not react in an instant when she did sense something. She jumped from his grasp before he could get a grip around her shoulder snakeskin-clad shoulder. She hissed as she glared at him from the side of the containment unit. The unit beeped an approval and released the latch.

The containment unit matched her hiss as the vacuum-sealing released as the door opened. The light offered from the unit gave her a better view of the other intruder.

Fuckin' Batman.

Like her, he wasn't one for useless words. He reached for her again. To any other person, his reaction would have been quick. But she was quicker. She leaped away from him, landing on top of a table. She scanned the room for an escape while Batman collected himself.

He moved faster, and he almost caught her as she jumped on the top of a containment unit. The unit had a vent reaching to the ceiling. It was a small vent, it would just be big enough for her to fit through. Considering that she was on the top floor, she kicked the vent apart, hoping it led to the roof. Barely thinking of the irony of the lab owner's concern for the workers' health but not so much for the general public's, she slipped out on to the roof. She raced to the edge and searched from something to climb down on.

She almost jumped to her death when a voice sounded behind her. "Can't you fly?" this new man teased. She whirled around, facing a very arrogant Nightwing. She grimaced, unsure yet uncaring about whether he saw her artificial fangs.

He chuckled at his own joke. "What's a kid like you doing this for, anyway?" he asked.

She couldn't help but grin at him. Everyone thought she was young. Even when she wasn't in costume in the middle of the night.

When it was clear she wasn't going to respond, he sighed. "Well, c'mon," he said, reaching for her. "Your parents-OW!" He pulled away quickly as she bit him hard in the arm. "What the Hell!?" he demanded as she slipped away.

"You're a lot hotter in person," she said as she raced to the other end of the roof. Nightwing ran after her, but found that the arm she had bitten was limp and numb, slowing him down. By the time he made it to her only possible destination and Batman had found his own way to the roof, she was gone.

"She bit me," Nightwing offered as explanation as to how he lost her. Both men looked down at the acrobat's still-limp arm, held up by his good one. His suit had been torn from the bite, and there were two human-sized fangs stuck in his skin. There was just a little blood spilling from both mini-wounds. Batman picked them out and inspected one. "I can't feel it," Nightwing said. "It's completely numb."

"We have to get you to Alfred," Batman replied.

"There was a significant amount of novocaine condensed into those little things," Alfred informed Batman and Grayson. They were in the Batcave, Grayson sitting in the computer chair and stretching his now-working arm. Batman stood beside him, watching Alfred as the butler delivered the results of his testing. Alfred turned to the keyboard of the supercomputer to display said results. The screen showed the chemical contents of the human-sized fang. "Along with an unidentifiable accelerating agent. They were glued to her teeth with a weakened form of dental glue. Breaking Master Dick's skin also broke the membrane at the tips, releasing the accelerated novocaine into his blood. We're lucky it didn't paralyze his entire side."

"So I'm not going to die?" Grayson half-joked. Though, considering his arm felt normal again, he was sure he was going to be OK.

Alfred smirked. "You'll be good for many more years, Master Dick," he said.

"So she working for a corrupt dentist," Dick noted.

"Or she's in school to be one," Batman said.

"She can't be more than 16 years old!"

"There have been no dental hygienists in the area reporting any lost novocaine," Alfred reported. "Or any other medical professional, as it happens. The glue is a common form that is sold to costume stores and the like, to attach things like vampire fangs onto human teeth. The accelerating agent is a single chemical that the system cannot identify. Whoever is on top of this operation, they know what they're doing."

"It'd be weird for someone to try and get vampire fangs now," Dick said. "It's June."

"You'd be surprised," Alfred said.

"What was she after in the lab?" Batman asked.

"Containment Unit B8 held the room's supply of toxic chemicals."

"Makes sense," Grayson said. "On top of all that chemical mumbo-jumbo, her suit was made out of some kinda snakeskin. And she had those fangs. Oh, and she hissed a lot."

"Minor fascination with snakes, do you think?" Alfred said with a smirk.

"Not so minor," Grayson said. "More like a Batman level." He laughed at his own joke despite Batman's glare.

"If she intends to poison people by biting them," Batman said once Grayson stopped laughing, "she's going to be surprised when her only victims are clumsy fist-fighters."


End file.
